


(We don't have to be) stars exploding in the night

by galacticproportions



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: A lifetime in their own legend, Communication, Established Relationship, In a way, Intrigue, M/M, Post-War, Sex Toys, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-13
Updated: 2018-07-13
Packaged: 2019-06-10 01:33:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,341
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15280653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/galacticproportions/pseuds/galacticproportions
Summary: The war is over--sort of--and Finn and Poe are still alive and still together. That means different things to different people.





	(We don't have to be) stars exploding in the night

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gloss](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gloss/gifts), [orchis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/orchis/gifts).



> Written not only for but with the active support and encouragement of, not to say the enabling of, my dear gloss and orchis.
> 
> Title from a song by the Magnetic Fields, who go on to sing,
> 
>  ...or electric eels under the covers.  
> We don't have to be anything quite so unreal--  
> Let's just be lovers.

At least the welcoming committee was small this time, about twenty people and WELCOM EROS OF THE RESISTANS in straggling Basic on the back of a racing pennant—it was a racing town. Finn sighed. “I thought we were just here for a war surplus deal.”

Poe shrugged over the controls. “News travels fast, I guess. We can work with it, we worked with it on Isfasa. You want to eat anything before we go down?”

“I'm okay.”

“Low blood sugar makes it hard to concentrate,” Poe reminded him. “You might miss something.”

“Fine.” He peeled open a yogurt-tube and sucked out the insides, flicked the filaments of the disintegrating tube into one of Poe's plant niches. The idea to boost the ship's air reserves this way seemed like a good one, but Poe was volubly unsure if it was worth the extra energy required to run the grow lights, and kept fussing with the adjustments. Finn liked the plants. They reminded him of Rey and her love of greenery, and they did make the air smell better, even if one of them tried to eat two of the others between Narvellus and Skaw 7.

Poe called it “mopping up,” what they'd been doing for almost the past standard year. Now that it was no longer a shooting war, the First Order was nominally dispersed and destroyed. Nominally, too, he and Poe were decommissioned—insofar as they were ever commissioned in the first place—and were batting around the galaxy trying to make a few credits by selling surplus materiel. But any money they made, they fed back into reparations and reconstruction for worlds caught in heavy crossfire, and in the meantime they were assessing local populations for remnants of First Order ideology, cells gone underground, any sign of resurgence, and making recommendations—“Which nobody follows,” Poe groused, pulling on the head-covering that Mouii custom demanded. “Narvellus was one of the first places where we picked up likely activity, and they haven't sent anyone down.”

“That we know of.”

“Okay, that we know of, but I think we _should_ know.”

It was an old not-quite-argument, with its germ on the bridge of the _Raddus,_ and Finn didn't want to have it now. “Let's go make nice,” he said, shouldering his duffel of samples. Poe did the same and they opened the port.

 

*

 

The systems they were hitting had all been caught up in the war in some way, so they knew what the Resistance was, or had been. Leia Organa's name shone still between the stars. But as they made their roundabout way, Finn and Poe heard Admiral Holdo pitied as a fanatic, scorned as a traitor, lauded as a martyr. Rey was, variously, a brawny monster or a waifish pawn, a lost Skywalker scion or (once) a duplicitous seductress. Finn didn't end up having to hit the guy; the rest of the late-night crowd favored the Skywalker scion version and took care of him.

Many of them didn't know of Finn or Poe at all. Some of them had heard of one but not the other, which was entertaining; they keep a tally on the control panel in the blue chalk Poe pocketed during a hoverpool game. They've never been threatened, but they've been fawned on and cold-shouldered and, once, spit on. Some people wanted to talk about the low point of the war, D'Qar and Crait and the Pteyan System Front and the biological weapons at Vurna, and that was hard and didn't usually last long. Some just wanted to talk with Poe about flying, which he was always happy to do: it still brought him joy, after all this time and in spite of everything.

Finn didn't recognize himself in the man some of them seemed to be expecting, the trailblazer who broke free of conditioning against impossible odds, the crack shot and tireless hand-to-hand fighter, the self-sacrificing hero. He knew more than they ever would about the way fear drove him blundering through the first part of the war and how shame sent him crashing through the second part. The people who earnestly offered him delicacies and slowly explained basic social mores to him, he just found funny, and he tended to treat them gently and laugh about it with Poe later, when they were back on board.

But not every misapprehension was in good faith, and not every welcome was genuine. They saw that in action first on Oskhavos, where they were greeted with a five-piece band, local worthies from planetary government and high-presence religious sects, a group of bright-eyed kids begging Poe to sign toy X-wings and (for preference) various extremities. They were there for three planetary days, and every time they started to talk about buying and selling captured First Order fusion packs, someone would offer to buy them a drink. At one cafe someone was playing a song about their first flight together—it wasn't very good, and Finn saw Poe's hands twitching, like he wanted to take the baliset away and play it better or possibly hit the player with it. That was the first world, though not the last, where people seemed obsessed with the idea the two of them together: the song was a song of love at first sight, a love that could break bonds and vanquish armies, and it made Finn extremely uncomfortable.

(When Finn came into his line of sight on their first covert run together, not long after they left Crait, Poe's whole face had warmed and bloomed into unmistakable welcome. It shone from him as he made the introductions and as the contact excused herself to use the facilities and, presumably, contact her principle. Maybe to report that very expression, the free gift Poe had made to the bar at large of how well he knew Finn and how happy he was to—“How are you a spy,” Finn hissed, crowding up to Poe in the booth.

Poe's smile stayed, curling up a little at the edges: his troublemaker look. “I'm a terrific spy. There isn't anything about this operation that calls for me to pretend I don't love you. That's not what we're being surreptitious about.”

He offered Finn a sip of his drink, patently proud of himself for using the word “surreptitious,” and Finn tasted it—sour beer, not his favorite—to give himself time to feel what he was feeling. This was the first time anyone had said “love.” Not the first time by a long stretch that Poe had said, “C'mere and kiss me,” and one of several times he'd added, “before that asshole gets back.” Never again the first time—hopefully not the last time—that Finn settled against him, craned clumsily toward him, sunk into him. Poe added, “When I'm pretending not to know you, you'll be able to tell,” just as the contact threaded her way back to their seats.

And it was true, an operation a few battles after that called for them to be strangers, and they'd planned it and reviewed it and prepared for it, and Poe's blank mechanical scan of the space where Finn was standing—it had hurt. Like a real rejection; like an accusation. Later, when the run was over and they'd got some though not all of what they'd come for, Poe made it up to him so ardently that Finn was actually sore and a little dazed the next day.)

The Provost of Oskhavos was more restrained than her people, as befitted her office, but she was sure something could be worked out. After all, she smiled, even heroes need to make a living.

They were there for three days because that was how long it took for one of her aides to let slip a phrase that might not have meant anything to most people but that rang in Finn's ears with the echo of General Hux's parade-ground addresses.

He tried to draw the conversation out, but he was always a terrible dissembler. They learned quickly during the war that any story they told had to have a high percentage of truth in it in order for him to tell it with any degree of conviction. He was sure the aide could feel his distaste, a trickle of cold slimy sweat down his mended spine. “You would have handled it better,” he said to Poe, when they were safely underway and the transmit to headquarters had gone through. “You could have played her, got her to think we were cool with it, enough for her to show her hand more.”

“And the next planet we hit, people would be saying that the heroes of the Resistance are driving double. It's fine this way. You did good. They'll be nervous.”

“They'll push it further underground.”

“Let 'em push. What do you think, a counter-propaganda team or infiltration? They're gonna ask for a recommendation when they respond to that comm, they like to pretend they care.”

That bitterness, or something like it, recurred more and more often along their long flight, throughout their many stops, between bouts of cabin sex and wranglings over whose turn it was to clean which surfaces and maintenance and flying lessons—“I pick up a virus in one of these dumps, I want you to be able to get the tub out of here and at least clear atmo before you blow up—” and card games (“to work on your sabacc face”) and the occasional addition of a new plant to the niches and plastigum hammocks. By the time they got to Moui, Finn was starting to worry.

 

*

 

“We make you welcome,” the Mouii representative reiterated. Their accent in Basic skipped H sounds and thickened some vowels (“mech” for “make”) but was easy enough to understand. Finn had done a little light research, not much, before they made planetfall: the Mouii had three major continents, one of which had been colonized by the people of another one. This was the third and much larger one, whose size and population maintained the balance of power on the planet—even after wartime depletions. The First Order had collected kids for the stormtrooper program here, and one pattern they'd figured out in their travels was that unless the Order was fully stripping a planet the way they'd done with Hays Minor, taking kids tended to ruin their chances of getting anything else out of the planet. No known wartime collaborators here; the Order had shot, not conscripted, a bunch of scientists and engineers and applied mathematicians toward the beginning of Starkiller's construction, and the two nations had put aside the uneasiness of their truce and their habit of competition to mount a surprisingly successful small-r resistance.

Unsurprisingly, of the two visitors, Finn is the one they're focused on. Their questions about his training are factual and precise, but he can hear the buried pain and fear in them: these people have been living with a nightmare. He answers as best he can, trying to tell them what they want to know and match their tone, until they start asking him questions about the Cimur blockade and the Battle of Gnene 3 instead. He was part of the tactical team for both of those, and he can't help but be flattered that they know that; to pay them back, he asks them about their tactics and methods here, and takes some notes, because you never know. Then there's a midday break for food and other creaturely needs, footsteps echoing unhurriedly back and forth down the tiled hallways, and after that they get down to the actual surplus—here, mainly cloth and other uniform components, like fasteners—that they're supposed to be there to sell.

In addition to the headcloth in public—their host Eneic's is bright blue, and the brighter the color, the higher the rank—and the love of gambling that kept the racing industry going in this town, standout cultural attributes of both the Mouii nations (so said the databanks) include a strong oral tradition and a corresponding discomfort with putting things in writing and a highly ritualized and multi-step courtship sequence. Of those three things, the last had seemed least likely to come up, which just went to show how the intel is only as good as the interpreter.

“Now,” said Eneic with a subtle but perceptible shift in their tone, once they'd closed the deal with a verbal agreement and a series of complex gestures, “you must tell us the story of 'ow you and your pilot met.”

Normally Poe fielded this one. But he was—not sulking, it made sense for him to hang back since Finn was the one whose story seemed to matter to them, but his expression indicated no real interest in stepping in, a cross between stubborn and thinking about something else. At least, that was what Finn thought was happening. He, himself, was a terrible spy: he couldn't even read the person he knew best, loved most.

He did the best he could with the story, and the Mouii listened avidly. “And this was in place of the trials by combat and quest and the exchange of locks of 'air? It's true, many couples 'ere argued for a simplified version, since we could die at any time.”

“No no no,” Finn said, “we didn't even know each other then, we didn't know we wanted to be together. That was way later. I guess you could say there were trials by combat, in a way.”

“It's a beautiful story,” said one with a pale-yellow headcloth, firmly. “A fight that began with love. People will sing songs about it, years from now.”

“They already do,” Poe muttered, “but not well.”

“Again, please?”

Poe sighed and leaned forward, planting his elbows on the table with a weary air. “People like to tell stories,” he said, “hell, I like stories too, I'm not trying to stop you, but we weren't the beginning of the fight and we weren't the end of it. We turned out to be a good team and I'm glad we're together.” He shifted again in his seat. “Apologies, High Seat--everyone.”

“We accept,” said Eneic, “but we don't need it.”

Yellow Headcloth was nodding. “It's good to be reminded of the dead and the lost. They're our reasons.”

“Exactly,” Poe said, and Finn nodded to keep up with him, but now it was his turn to be distracted as the conversation moved on. He was irritated with Poe, who usually did a better job of holding his end up, and he was also frustrated because if the preoccupation was coming from something that they actually needed to deal with—if all this apparently mutual interest and understanding was another cover (pretty deep cover, it would have to be) for First Order sympathies or worse, and Poe picked up on something that suggested it—then he needed to figure out a way to make it known in one of the ways they'd agreed on beforehand. If Finn needed to be reacting to something, he'd like to know that, and if he didn't, then all the reacting he was doing was a waste of his energy.

Also, he realized, he liked these people. He liked how they carried themselves, at least some of their priorities, how they responded to suffering. He didn't want them to be secret enemies, and he wanted Poe to give them their due.

Then again, they weren't exactly giving him his, with that “your pilot” comment and more generally talking about Poe instead of to him. Finn wanted to be fair. They seemed to have respected Poe's response, though, and warmed up to him a little bit, and Poe seemed to be responding to _that,_ as he usually did. By the time they parted for the night, they were all exchanging the complicated Mouii handgrips and wishing each other good dreams in a way that felt genuine, not just formal.

Despite the positive note they ended on, Finn was nowhere near ready for sleep. They needed to debrief, and he was hoping they didn't need to argue. He cleaned the onboard commode and sink and shower rig while Poe did the preflight checks, and he was watering the cabin plants when he heard the port open and close, and Poe's steps ringing on metal, and Poe's voice in his ear saying, “Sorry.”

“Yeah,” Finn said. “What was that?” He liked Eneic's “we accept, but we don't need it,” and had filed it for future use, but not for use right now. He wasn't sure he needed an apology, but he wanted an explanation, and sat Poe down on the bunk and looked at him expectantly.

“A bunch of things,” Poe said. “Some of them...went away. Because of how they turned out to be, the Mouii, I mean. But it's the...you know. The song thing, the story thing. I get sick of it.”

“Is it because of what they said, because of everyone who—because I get that, Poe, I really do. I just don't want the objective to get messed up just because people are sometimes annoying.”

“Partly that, yeah, and also—it's for us. I mean, for each other, we got together for each other, not for the war.” Normally when they were both sitting on the bunk, Poe automatically reacted by inching ever closer, but he was holding himself away. Finn wished he wouldn't. “The war _messed it up,_ it made it harder, it made it take forever, for one thing, do you have any idea how much I would have rather just hit on you in peacetime, sidled up to you in a bar or—or given you a lock of my hair or something, matching cock rings, whatever the hell they do here—”

Finn decided he'd just have to close the gap himself, pulled Poe in and kissed him. “Okay,” he said. “Me too. I get it. I think. You want me to back you up, next time?”

“Kinda want you to back me up right now.”

“What does that even mean,” Finn sighed, “and also, could you answer the question before I do whatever it is?”

“Yeah, I would. I would like that. If it doesn't mess up the objective. And if you don't mind.”

“I don't mind,” Finn said, and Poe leaned into him and things escalated fairly rapidly from there, lots of kissing and preliminary groping and tossing clothes and advanced groping, until Finn was spitting on his fingers and reaching around and stopping in shock as he touched, not tight puckered flesh, but hard plasticomposite.

He craned backward from Poe, who was grinning—his troublemaker look.

“You,” Finn said. “You were wearing this all day?”

“Wearing this _for you_ all day,” Poe corrected. “Well, since the midday break. They've got a single-use fresher in that building, nice and quiet.”

“I know, I spotted it when I was checking the exits. You're unbelievable. Sitting on your ass all day—this ass right here—” he gave one cheek an extra squeeze, twisted the plug a little, making Poe shiver—“going, 'Oh, you know how people exaggerate, oh, we've been together a long time now, oh, well, yeah, we make a good team.' And all the time—” He twisted the plug again, drew it out to its widest point and traced stretched muscle with a fingertip, getting hard as he listened to the change in Poe's breathing. “Think you can get off like this, or were you hoping for something else?”

“You tell me,” Poe said, his voice sounding almost normal. “You're the big-shot tactician, I'm just the transporta—”

Finn pulled the plug all the way out and rolled Poe on his side and slid into him, and the talking stopped again for a while, the cabin creaking and straining and rocking with them.

“You put that plug in your duffel,” Finn said eventually. “With the samples.”

“Sure did.”

“I really, really can't believe you.”

“Yeah,” Poe said. “Actually, you can.”

 


End file.
